


it's too cold for you here

by catwing



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, nightmare imagery stuff, panic attacks & discussion of mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catwing/pseuds/catwing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin's had nightmares for ten years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's too cold for you here

The first time Rin wakes up from a nightmare screaming, he's seven. Later the memory gets muddled, turns into a terrified blur of his mothers arms around him, her voice stumbling over itself to reassure and quiet him. _Everything is ok, he's going to wake his sister. Shh._ The worst part is that even when he's woken up fully and calmed down, been held tight and rocked and brought a warm drink and tucked back into bed, his father's still gone.

The dreams never stop, but he gets better at enduring them. He learns to catch the scream in his throat before he's even awake, to swallow down his fear and lie still in bed till the shakes go away. By the time he's ten he never wakes his mother, just pulls the blankets over his head and cries himself to sleep in complete silence. Tears help, but he doesn't want to hear his mother hovering outside the door wondering whether she should come in to comfort him. He doesn't want her to come, he doesn't want her to choose to stay outside.

The content of his nightmares evolves over time. Flurried, unclear images of his father swallowed whole by sharks or by the ocean itself change first to dreams where his mother dies, hit by cars and trains and busses, shot on the street, collapsing soundlessly at the dinner table. Once he dreams of his mother biting into his father's neck like the sharks in his earliest dreams, her weird pointed teeth looking razor-sharp and dangerous in a way they never have to him in real life.

Later, in Australia, he has dreams where he's drowning in the school pool with students and teachers and lifeguards all around him, unable to remember the English word for "help." And he dreams about Haru. Haru dying, Haru looking straight through him while he yells, trying to race Haru in water that feels like molasses, being kissed uncaringly and then left alone.

When he swims in the relay with his friends, it eases a tension in him he'd been carrying so long he'd stopped noticing it. When Haru kisses him for the first time and brings him home like a scared, snappish stray to be held and loved and washed clean, Rin half expects the nightmares to stop. Haru's presence in his life feels like it mends him all the way through, resolving each conflict and patching up each wound, moving backwards thought his whole fucked up, conflict-ridden life. Just Haru being there, wanting him around, incorporating him into his plodding, incomprehensible Haru-routine, is like a bandage on every night Rin ever spent lying awake feeling unlovable.

And he's so beautiful. Rin would spend all day looking at him, humbled and unworthy and small and hot all over, just studying the slight upturn of the tip of his noise and the way one thin eyebrow furrows when he's irritated. Rin can't imagine having bad dreams when he gets to kiss someone like that.

But the nightmares don't stop.

A few weeks after the relay he wakes up in Haru's bed with violent start, jerking out of Haru's arms before he can stop himself. He's dreamed of his dad dying. He hasn't done in years. Haru sits up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, peering at Rin in confusion through the dark. Rin flinches away from him, Haru doesn't need to see him like this.

"Rin?" Haru brushes Rin's shoulder with the tips of his fingertips. "What is it?"

It's a second before Rin can get the breath to mutter, "Nothing, just a bad dream, go back to sleep."

Haru has to accept that and roll over and go back to sleep, because if Haru tries to take care of him right now Rin's heart is probably going to pull itself apart. He's made of glass and Haru is about to shatter him into a jillion pieces. He just needs to be alone to curl up in a little ball and cry silently until he loses consciousness. _Please._

Haru doesn't say anything, but he doesn't go back to sleep either. He carefully crosses his legs in bed behind Rin and strokes his hair, very gently, until tears well up in Rin's eyes and drip off the end of his nose. Finally, because he doesn't know what else to do, Rin lets himself collapse backwards into Haru's lap, his shoulders against Haru's chest and head tucked under his chin. The tears keep going down the bridge of his nose, dripping steadily onto the front of his t-shirt, and he can't keep his breath under control no matter how hard he tries. Haru wraps his arms around him tightly, and Rin feels like he's seven again, being rocked into oblivion, held until he's all cried out.

He falls asleep like that, and when he wakes up they're lying sideways, Haru's body curled protectively around his head. They don't talk about it.

The next time it happens, he's staying the weekend, about a month later.

He's stumbling frantically out of bed with a hand pressed over his mouth before he fully knows what's happening, and he can't stop gasping for air between his fingers. It takes a second for him to know where he is, and another before the images and sounds and emotions of the dream solidify in his mind into something that makes sense. Then he feels like he's going to throw up.

He'd risen up from the depths of the ocean, huge and hungry and malicious, his body clumsy and violent, teeth bared. When he saw his father floating in the water above him, he opened his giant maw to him. The last thing he remembers is blood in the water.

His legs feel trembly like they might give out, so he sinks down to sit on the ground, and he's sobbing, gasping desperately for air between convulsive fits of weeping. He can't breath, oh god. He's dying, he'd going to drown.

He realizes Haru's hands are on his shoulders, hears Haru say his name. He gets his hands around Haru's wrists, somehow. _I can't breath_ , he thinks, but he's crying too hard to talk.

"Rin," Haru says, and his voice is so steady. So slow. "Everything is ok."

Rin looks up at him, at his sleepy, forced-calm face, at the little concerned wrinkle above his eyes, and a tiny little part of Rin believes him. It's enough. He clings to Haru, and he starts breathing.

Later, sitting on Haru's kitchen floor waiting to be brought tea, he _really_ feels like he's a kid again. He stole a blanket from Haru's bed to wrap up in and everything. He also, now that he's more shaken than anything, is starting to feel embarrassed. He's too old not to be able to deal with this shit on his own. Like, ten years too old. Hell, he's too old to even still be having these nightmares. A wave of shame washes over him. He wants to hide.

Haru sits down in front of him and slides his tea along the floor to him. He crosses his legs under him and then looks up at Rin. He frowns when he sees his expression.

"What's wrong?"

Rin scowls into his blanket. 

"It's just... pathetic." Rin spits, finally. Haru doesn't answer, just raises an eyebrow.

"I'm not a child anymore, I shouldn't be having nightmares and crying in the middle of the night. Sometimes I even get like that without the nightmares, even in the middle of the day. It's been eleven years." Haru doesn't ask since what, and Rin is greatful.

"I just," Rin looks away, he feels choked with self loathing, like there's no way to say what he means that won't make him hate himself that much more. "I can't stand you seeing me like this. Seeing how fucked up I am. You aren't like that. You shouldn't have to take care of me like a little kid. It's pathetic."

Haru looks taken aback, then, after a moment of deliberation, says, "No, I am."

"What?"

"I am. Like that." Haru meets his gaze as he says it, and Rin is so surprised he forgets to feel disgusted with himself. He can't read Haru's expression.

Haru breathes in, out, and continues. His hair is tousled and his shirt rumpled around the sleeves where Rin had held onto him, his hands tucked into his crossed legs.

"I get sad," he says. "For days and days. Or I just don't feel anything at all. I'll be so tired and not care about anything." He pauses and looks away. "It used to be... worse. A lot worse."

Rin doesn't know what to say. He shivers involuntarily, and to his complete shock, Haru reaches for his hand. He threads their fingers together, Rin can feel Haru's calluses brush the soft skin over his knuckles. It's too much. It's so much more than Rin deserves.

"You don't have to be all on your own," Haru says, looking him dead in the eye. "Other people help."  
  
Rin's throat is burning. He feels like glass again, but he's not shattering. He's melting down. He's being reformed.

There's nothing he can say to Haru, nothing that would be enough, even if his voice was working. He can only hold tightly to Haru's hand while he drinks his tea in silence. He thinks Haru understands, though, because when he gets up to take Rin's empty cup he presses a kiss to his forehead, hard.

Years later, when he looks back on that night, Rin finds it hard to remember that he was never truly drowning, never really underwater. It's easy to imagine that Haru reached down into the cold, silent depths of the sea and pulled him up into the dim electric light of his small, warm kitchen where heaters whirred and teapots rattled. Easy to feel as though Haru drew him, monstrous and inhuman, from the ocean and kissed him into a boy like some grotesque and lovely fairy tale. But at the same time, Rin knows he prefers the memory of what really happened to any mystical lovestory-nightmare he could invent. Haru sitting on his kitchen floor in a rumpled hoodie with sleep in his eyes, quietly telling Rin he doesn't have to be alone. 

**Author's Note:**

> [this fic now has an official end credits song because of reasons](http://perfectlycrystal.tumblr.com/post/47444096971/lust-for-life-girls)


End file.
